BRINGING WALLET TO THE MASSES

Demonetization has brought the players to capture the opportunity to increase their sales through association with more users, more so through a Maida’s touch in the rural areas.  The challenge is to push through the sales in the Tier II and Tier III towns unlike other digital communiques, which target the urban folks.  What is being done in this direction?

1. Most of the players are activating and holding huge camps educating and familiarising people in villages to various use cases of a mobile wallet.
2. Mobikwik is holding huge number of customer camps in UP, Gujarat and Rajasthan.  It targets villages on the outskirts of these states, thus conducting around three to four camps in a day in different villages in a state.
3. The camps are conducted to clarify the villagers’ doubts as to how the app can be downloaded, how to transfer money and how the utility bills can be paid.  Also Mobikwik demonstrates as to how the wallet is useful in making cashless payments for milk, grocery and also in making payments at Government fair price shops and so on.
4. The app in the rural folk is to be simple and menu driven, without any additional features, as in the case of urban folks.  Bharti Airtel pushes its product by educating as to how a product runs on USSD platform on feature phones, without internet connectivity.
5. The mobile wallet services of Airtel Payment Bank, which also covers mobile wallet services, are available in 12 regional languages.  Also, Airtel Money has tied up with Kirana Stores and chemists.  Thus it has more dependency on local to reach the masses.
6. PAYTM has engaged more teams of agents who conduct sessions and workshops across schools, colleges and village panchayats, thus educating people about the benefits of using PAYTM services.  They have launched EACH ONE TEACH ONE initiative and thus encourage everyone to teach their family, friends and neighbours to use PAYTM.

The overall opinion of these service providers is:

• The mobile wallets should target the young male and graduates in rural India, who are more technology savvy and can be engaged easily.
• Also men of the age group 30-50 years can be targeted in the rural India, who are not yet active users but can be changed with right programs and education.
• Further, young homemakers also can be targeted and educated on mobile wallet services.